Art History Sphere in Baby Blue

1994, papers, gouache, ink, wire, 8 x 8 x 8 inches in plexi box.

I started by cutting up Grandma’s Renaissance art history notes and gluing them to harder paper. Then I took a compass and drew many circles all over the place. I cut with my Exacto knife along the lines of the cirlces and the lines of the writing paper, weaving back and forth between curve and straight line to make my own strip like shapes. These I glued together to make a very large whitish woven artwork that I own in my house in London.

Inevitably, when I cut out specific forms on a big piece of paper, there are always scraps left over. I liked all these little shapes and wanted to use them. Using these to make a completely different piece was a revelation. I strung them together with wire and made a few wire strings. I played with them in different ways, hanging and twisting, but they didn’t have enough substance. In the end, I wound them up into multiple spheres that, though they were dense, you could look through and into them. Next, I painted and stained the sides of the paper that didn’t have any writing. The bleeding inks are cool because they have a life of their own. They transfer between sides of the paper, making the two-dimensional paper three-dimensional in concept. To me, at the time, I found all these developments in arriving at a finished artwork and all these aesthetic revelations amazing. Now, they are all just par for the course.